Former Trail Blazers guard Derek Anderson took the gloves off Tuesday, setting the record straight about his time in Portland, among other things.

Anderson spoke in a wide-ranging interview on 750-AM The Game talking about his childhood, growing up abandoned and poor, and his time with the Blazers. He said the infamous incident in 2005 in which he apparently blew off a Blazers game, sitting out with a toothache, and was spotted in the McDonald's drive-thru was a case of the organization throwing him under the bus.

The guard said he asked for a trade in 2005, and said he didn't want to be in Portland anymore. According to Anderson, team president Steve Patterson told him, "Go home, we'll come up with something." The toothache was a fabrication by the organization, Anderson said, intended to make him look bad.

Said Anderson: "When Steve told me, I told him I don't want to be here, all the players were like, 'Let him go, trade him.' Rasheed asked to be traded. Damon sat on the end of the bench and asked to be traded. Everyone was trying to get out of there, but because I'm the nice guy and they figure, 'Hey he won't go to the paper and say anything, he won't cuss us out and flip us off in the stands, let's make him a scapegoat.'

"That happens to all good guys who are in a bad situation. They make him a scapegoat. If i would have choked the coach and did everything else, then what? Now, people try to reward people with attitudes and it's not right. Not one of my teammates would ever say anything. They forget, I am a man. No one has ever tried me or disrespected me. You know how the newspaper works. They were trying to look for a scape goat and a story, who else could they go to? Everyone else had been in jail."

The guard played in only eight of Portland's final 42 games, after asking for a trade. He sat with various ailments including a "sinus ailment, dental problems and back spasms," according to the team at the time. Anderson said it was the team's idea for him to sit. Anderson's thought raises some good questions about whether the organization may have been trying to tank that season and improve their draft status --- firing Maurice Cheeks mid-season and finishing with only 27 victories.

Anderson went on to win an NBA championship with the Miami Heat in 2006. He also previously won an Olympic festival gold medal and an NCAA title at Kentucky.

Anderson's story, outlined in a book he wrote last year titled, "Stamina," is one of an 11-year old kid who found himself poor, homeless, without parental supervision and an important decision to make --- which direction to go?

He talked during the interview about his uncle George, and called him, "A man who took care of another man's son." Also, about finding his mother and father, "I cleaned up my mother, and forgave them both," he said.